Cops closing in on Kintanar’s killers

Police are closing in on members of the New People’s Army unit that assassinated former NPA chieftain Romulo Kintanar, an official said yesterday.

Chief Superintendent Robert Delfin, director of the Philippine National Police’s intelligence division, identified the suspects as Tirso Alcantara, Leo Velasco, Philip Limjuco and Bartolome Melchor.

All four are high-profile members of the NPA’s so-called National Partisan Committee, Delfin said.

Alcantara, also known as Ka Bert, "may be one of the planners" of the Kintanar killing, Delfin said, adding that the PNP has learned that the committee met sometime in November or December last year.

"We thought it was an annual plenum but it turned out to be a meeting of the group to finalize Kintanar’s liquidation," he said.

Delfin said Alcantara is next in line to Velasco in the hierarchy of the National Partisan Command, said to be the special operations unit of the NPA tasked with carrying out liquidation orders from Jose Maria Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines. The estimated 9,000-strong NPA is the armed wing of the CPP.

Kintanar was gunned down last Thursday while having lunch in a Japanese restaurant at the Quezon City Memorial Circle.

Communist rebel spokesman Gregorio Rosal said it was Kintanar’s punishment for "gangster" acts and an alleged plot to assassinate Sison.

He said Kintanar was considered a "traitor" by Sison for breaking away from the mainstream communist rebellion and was sentenced to death by an NPA "court." Sison, who lives in self-exile in the Netherlands, denied ordering the killing.

Kintanar led a faction of the guerrilla group that favored peace talks instead of armed clashes.

"We stick to the group of Limjuco and Melchor (as the ones behind the killing) although we have latest intelligence information that Bert Alcantara supervised the operation," Delfin said. "Limjuco and Melchor were the ones on the ground."

Noting the bullet wounds sustained by Kintanar, Delfin said the killing may have been carried out by new recruits. "We believe this is a test mission for new recruits but with the presence of seasoned cadres."

Kintanar’s body had "graze wounds," indicating that some of the assassins’ bullets missed. Kintanar, a veteran rebel, may even have been able to shoot back if he was armed at the time, Delfin said.

"If he was not finished off at close range, he could have survived," he said.

Meanwhile, Chief Superintendent Romeo Maganto, ordered by President Arroyo to lead the investigation, said two men who once worked closely with Kintanar may have set him up.

He refused to identify the men but said they work with the government. Maganto gave no details.

He said he will follow that lead as well as the NPA’s alleged involvement in the killing.

Yesterday, Kintanar’s widow, Joy, led a memorial service at the Japanese restaurant where her husband was gunned down. Accompanied by priest and activist Fr. Robert Reyes, Joy tearfully read a passage from the Bible and lit candles.

She said she found it difficult to believe that his very own former comrades — for whom he gave 25 years of his life — would one day kill him.

"Why must a son of the motherland die so others may see the light?" she asked in Filipino, her voice quivering with emotion.

The rebels have been waging an armed campaign for 24 years. Peace talks between the government and the communists collapsed in 2001 after the rebels gunned down two congressmen.

Last year, the United States and several European governments declared the CPP and the NPA as "foreign terrorist organizations" and moved to freeze the rebels’ foreign funding. – With Nikko Dizon, Romel Bagares